Ep. 263. News: Digital all the way down

Episode 425
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October 22nd, 2018
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1 hr 15 mins

About this Episode

Our hosts, David M. Brear and Simon Taylor are joined by two great guests: James Hurley, Enterprise Editor, The Times and Kirsty Grant, Investment Director, Seedrs.

First up, we've got an insight into 11:FS Foundry and our partnership with DNB. David sat down with Leda Glyptis, Foundry CEO and Rasmus Figenschou, Group EVP for New Business, and our strategic partner at DNB.

Two-thirds of Amazon Prime members would try banking with the retailer, according to Bain study. Bain surveyed 6,000 U.S. consumers recently with a simple question: If Amazon launched a free online bank account that came with 2 percent cash back on all Amazon.com purchases, would you sign up to try it? 2/3s Amazon Prime customers would sign up, 43% of non-Prime Amazon customers would, and 37% of non-Amazon customers.

Walmart and Paypal team up. PayPal users will be able to withdraw and deposit cash into their PayPal account at any Walmart store. In addition, PayPal Cash Mastercard customers can access their cash balance using Walmart service desks, ATMs, and cash registers. This is the first time PayPal users are able to transact in cash, but each cash transaction is priced at a flat, $3 service fee. The parties have not disclosed how that fee is divided between Walmart and PayPal. Walmart offers a variety of debit and credit card options, as well as services such as money transfers, remittances, check cashing, tax preparation, and billpay.

Contactless payments overtake chip and pin. Contactless payments have become more popular than chip-and-pin card transactions for the first time in the UK, according to Worldpay. Contactless overtook in June, when 51% of in-store card transactions were contactless, rising to 52% in July. Analysis of the company's data showed that use of the newer payment method jumped by 30% between June 2017 and June 2018.

Nationwide’s Open Banking for Good challenge. Nationwide Building Society is injecting £3 million in funding to encourage fintech startups and academics to develop Open Banking apps that can help to improve the lives of the one in four UK households who are financially squeezed – equivalent to 12.7 million people. Government-sponsored Open Banking for Good challenge, pairs established fintechs and start-ups with debt and money charities in a bid to develop apps that help drive financial inclusion.

FCA Opens the 5th sandbox cohort and Green Fintech Challenge. On Monday the FCA opened again for applications as part of cohort 5 for the regulatory sandbox. Also, this week is Green Great Britain Week and on Friday they are holding an event to launch The Innovate FinTech Challenge, to coincide with the new sandbox.

We also have a great interview with Anna Wallace, Head of the Innovate Department at the FCA to learn more.

RBS vs Marcus. RBS has launched a savings account paying 1.5 per cent interest, one of the highest rates currently available. It comes weeks after Goldman Sachs shook up the market by announcing its first savings account in the UK, also paying 1.5 per cent. However, the rate only applies to to the first £10,000, which is some way short of Goldman's account which pays 1.5 per cent up to £250,000.

From saving to spending. Tandem’s 2nd credit card, the “Journey Card” - targets people in the U.K. who have yet to build up a credit history at all. Credit cards are already one of the most effective ways of improving your credit score. Like Tandem’s other card, Journey Card has low FX fees, but unlike the original card it has no cashback and a higher APR.
Both cards offer integrations into Tandem’s banking app, which in turn acts as a PFM and allows you to aggregate your non-Tandem banking data.

Inspiring the tech leaders of the future. International Financial Corporation (“IFC”), a member of the World Bank Group, and Ant Financial jointly announced the 10x1000 Tech for Inclusion programme, a comprehensive programme to provide training to 10,000 tech experts in emerging markets from both public and private sectors over the next 10 years.
The programme aims to build an interactive and open platform to increase support for tech leaders and skilled individuals who are working to alleviate poverty and make basic financial services more broadly accessible in Indonesia, which will be the first stop of the programme within emerging markets.

Britain’s lacklustre fight against money laundering. No one knows how much dirty money is rinsed through London, but Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) reckons British banks and their subsidiaries (including those in overseas territories) launder “many hundreds of billions of pounds” each year. British companies and partnerships were prominent among the getaway vehicles used in some of the biggest money-laundering schemes of recent years, including the “Russian laundromat”, in which at least $20bn was siphoned out of Russia in 2010-14, and an even bigger washing exercise through Danske Bank’s Estonian branch.

And finally, and following on from the dirty money story, dirty cake money. Patisserie Valerie’s chairman has swooped in with a rescue loan package after a black hole in the company’s accounts led to its finance chief being arrested on suspicion of fraud. Patisserie Holdings said on Wednesday that it has been notified of “significant, and potentially fraudulent, accounting irregularities and therefore a potential material mis-statement of the company’s accounts”.
It relates to £1.14 million owed to HMRC. The group’s finance director Chris Marsh, who was suspended from his role earlier this week, has been arrested on suspicion of fraud, but was later released.

All this and so much more on today's episode of Fintech Insider!

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